Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

The Middle East Minefield

By Alan
Caruba

I often
wonder whether Americans really care about the outcome of events as
regards Israel. I know that a segment of American Jews are concerned and that
evangelical Christians may care even more.

I can’t escape
the feeling, though, that other than the horror of an Iranian nuclear missile
blowing up Israel and killing its citizens (both Jewish and Muslim), that most Americans are not that committed to its survival. I suspect that
most Europeans are even less committed.

I cite Israel because of the hostility of
all others in the Middle East, but they may not be as hostile as things appear. Israel is a major
deterrent to Iran’s ambitions.

Things are
never what they seem in the Middle East.

A recent
article in CanadaFreePress.com by Doug Hagmann suggests that the Benghazi
affair that the Obama administration is trying to get passed actually masks a
major arms movement from Libya to the Syrian rebels in order to overthrow its
dictator, Bashar Assad. Hagmann asserts that it was a CIA operation, not a diplomatic one, and what
was attacked was not a consulate, but rather a site for the storage and
transmittal of weapons. The attack was an effort to disrupt it by those seeking
to keep Assad in power, both Russia and Iran.

The major
actors in this are the U.S., Turkey, and Egypt. The main benefactor would be
Saudi Arabia whose oil fields are within the range of Iranian missiles. The
Russians are part of the picture because they do not want to lose a key Syrian
port for its naval ships, but Russia, too, is a major oil producer and anything
that might harm its interests is seen as a bonus.

After 9/11
when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked Americans supported an
energetic response, but after George W. Bush committed troops to Afghanistan
and Iraq it wasn’t long before Americans decided it was a bad idea. Too many
memories of Vietnam along with too much cost in blood and treasure took the
edge off of the reprisal in Afghanistan or the deposing of Iraq’s Saddam
Hussein. Iraq is an oil producer as well, but is now allied with the Iranians
where its president found sanctuary during Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.

Leon
Trotsky, an associate of Stalin, once said, “You might not be interested in
war, but war may be interested in you.” Wars occur in various ways, deliberate
and accidental, but it is the latter that would seem the case these days in a
Middle East where Hamas engaged in a lengthy barrage of rockets and then acted
surprised that Israel responded, killing a number of their top people and
inflicting a lot of damage in Gaza.

Hamas was
acting under the orders from Iran. The president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, a
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, brokered a cease fire deal, but also decided
he wants to be the next dictator of Egypt. Who saw that coming? The Egyptians
had risked life and limb in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to depose Hosni Mubarack and
then turned around and voted Morsi into office.

What were
they thinking? Why didn’t they embrace a more secular leader? The answer is
that Islam is everything in the Middle East. Muslims cannot change and it is
foolish to think they will. If you loved the seventh century, you will love the
Middle East.

Egypt is
important to the U.S. What happens there determines much of the direction the
Middle East takes. That explains why the Obama administration wants to forgive
a billion in debt and to throw another billion or more at Morsi by way of
enlisting him to act as a counter weight to Hamas. On Nov 24 Iranian president
Mahmud Ahmadinejad was on the phone to Hamas’s Ismail Haniya and with Jihad
Islami leaders to assure them they would be receiving munitions to refill their
arsenals.

Reportedly,
Obama has agreed to send U.S. troops to Egypt’s Sinai to interdict the arms
smuggling routes through the desert to Gaza. Indeed, it was this offer that is
said to have gotten Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to back off a ground
invasion, but in this three dimensional game of chess, Israel, Egypt, and
Turkey are all working with the U.S.

The U.S.
Navy has been busy throughout the brief conflict and earlier. For years it has
taken up permanent residency off the coast of Iran and in the Persian Gulf.
Other elements are presently positioned off the coast of Syria where their
Russian counterparts can also be found.

Bashar
Assad has made Turkey very nervous. Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus want to keep
him alive. Turkey borders Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and is in proximity of Russia,
bordering Georgia. It has its hands full just tending to the thousands of
Syrians that have fled there. The U.S. is providing Turkey with Patriot
missiles and AWACs, manned by U.S. military, and that could become yet another
flashpoint.

None of the
nations involved want a really big war to break out.

The wild
card is Israel whose very existence is threatened by Iran. The U.S. is doing
what it can to avoid that. So far the cooperation is working. If Iran announces
it has nuclear weapons or Israeli intelligence determines that's the case, all bets are off.

The major
beneficiary of all of this is Saudi Arabia and, as the leader of the majority
Sunni Muslims worldwide, it has no love for Shiite Iran. In effect the U.S.
intelligence capabilities and its military have become its mercenary army,
eliminating Saddam Hussein, standing aside when Mubarak and Gaddafi fell and now working to eliminate Bashar Assad.

The U.S. doesn't mind working with dictators, so long as they are "our" dictators, friendly to our interests.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.